anita staniszewski

Name: Anita Maria Staniszewski
Age: 26 94
Occupation: Freelance blogger (mainly a journalist formerly)
Born: June 8th, 1919 Warsaw, Poland
Raised: New York, New York, USA
Currently: Ashwick Grove, Conneticut, USA (x)

Species: Vampire
Maker: Christian Luxford
Progenies: None
Turned: 1945 post WWII

Timeline
June 8th, 1919 (0) – Anita is born in Warsaw, Poland.
August 1927 (8) – Anita immigrates to New York, New York.
1938 (19) - Anita is hired by The New York Times as a secretary.
September 1939 (20) – Anita writes an article which ends up in the hands on her editor. He publishes it, and her story is so well-received that she's promoted to a full time journalist.
1941 (22) – Anita begins dating Jester “Jesse” Collins.
1945 (26) – Anita is turned into a vampire.
2013 (94) - Anita moves to Ashwick Grove, CT.

Biography: Anita was born in Warsaw, Poland to Jewish parents Eliana and David Staniszewski. Despite being of a minority, they owned and operated a successful local tailoring business which had been passed down through Eliana's family for three generations. Anita grew up in a fog of interwar radio transmissions, rationing rumors, and war stories from drunk veterans on the street. Europe, even after the conclusion of WWI, was not at peace, and even though Warsaw homed one of the largest congregations of Jews in the world, they still only accounted for 10% of the population.

Like most Jews living in interwar Poland, Anita identified first as Jewish and second as Polish. She attended a Jewish school, lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and considered Yiddish to be her first language (before Polish, English, and Hebrew which she also spoke). Due to the growing lack of relativity between the Jewish population and Polish population, animosity rose in the everyday. During early 1927 when Anita was eight years old, she was chased from her schoolyard along with some of her classmates by a group of teenage boys and young men. Even if they were only trying to scare her, Anita (barely enrolled in school) feared for her life. She'd grown up in an anti-Semitic culture, knew that her country didn't necessarily favor her family's religion, rued the day that another war would come to Europe.

Anita ran through the back streets 0f Warsaw, hoping the men chasing her were not local enough to know the city well. All of the other children had ducked away in alleys and corners unnoticed, but the perpetrators had their eye on Anita. Just when she thought all hope was lost, when she'd scraped her knee falling down, and she'd dropped her book three blocks back, and she'd nearly run out of breath, Anita noticed an open front door on a street level apartment. She was in a Jewish part of town, and she knew almost everyone else who lived nearby; hopefully the apartment was safe. She took the chance. Anita bolted inside the door, slammed it behind her, bolted and locked with iron probably meant to keep out the first world war. Anita felt the pounding behind her as she slid down to the floor in a ball. She was praying in Yiddish ironically.

And that's when Anita heard the footsteps. From the back of the apartment came a tall man with smoothed hair and a nice suit. He looked at her curiously, then listened closer to the slurs. The man motioned for her to move out of the way, and when he opened the door he calmly told the men to leave her alone, to never harass Anita or any Jew ever again. They all left as if in a trance. The door was shut.

That afternoon he accompanied Anita back to her parents where he explained what happened and apologized for the men.

Anita was thankful for the man the rest of her life. A few months later, Eliana and David decided they would move to America to escape the religious turmoil in Europe. Anita never forgot about the mysterious man whose house she entered so willingly and who shooed off avid Jew-haters so effortlessly. She wished she could convince people to drop their inhibitions with that kind of ease.

Anita did well in America. Her parents continued their tailoring business in a Jewish neighborhood of New York City where Anita continued school, eventually going off to train at a secretary school. It's not what she really wanted to do though. If it were forty years in the future, Anita would have attended college, majored in journalism, and likely ended up on CNN. In 1937, though, she was an immigrant, Jewish, and female. Three strikes. Anita did well for herself though; she was hired by The New York Times to sit as the secretary for international affairs. Within her limitations, it was a dream job.

That didn't stop her from writing though. All she'd ever wanted to do was write. Anita had written all her life about Poland and the war and what she wanted children in the future to not know. When Anita sat in on meetings, surrounded by Anglo American men, she noted the assignments not only to deliver later, but to work on herself. Ever article her higher ups wrote, she did too. They were all stuffed into a shoebox kept under her bed until one day when she accidentally left a piece on her desk.

It landed in the hands of the editor who nearly choked when he learned "Anita Staniszucchini" wrote such alarming prose about prejudice and politics. When he asked her how she knew so much, Anita replied, "I've been this good of a writer since the day I started working here, but you never thought to consider me anything more than secretary. I wonder why that is."

That Sunday Anita's article was the cover story, she was promoted to journalist, and she thanked the god her people were killed over for finally recognizing her hard work.

When Anita was 22, she met a paper delivery boy who introduced himself as Jesse Collins. She'd learn months later (from his mother) that his birth name was actually Jester. Anita had always been a bit radical (in that she didn't think any one person was inherently superior to anyone else). It was no surprise then that the first boy she'd ever really been sweet on wasn't Jewish. He wasn't even white. Before Anita brought Jesse home to meet her parents, she told them boldly "Jesse is black and he's my boyfriend. If you don't like it then we'll have dinner somewhere else." Eliana and David were, of course, surprised in 1941 that their daughter would even consider dating a black man, but they weren't surprised she didn't care what anyone thought about it. Jesse came over for dinner that night and Mr. and Mrs. Staniszewski were amazed by the amount they had in common. They were only disappointed that their daughter couldn't legally marry her sweetheart. (When interracial marriage was finally legalized in 1967, Anita cried tears of joy for days.)

tbc

Traits: Inquisitive, liberal, humanitarian, curious, blunt, grounded, hardworking, persistent, passionate, snazzy (yes), auspicious, domestic, appreciative, bold, fearless, supportive, loyal, preachy, unreserved, thoughtful, hopeful, extroverted, indiscreet, analytical, obstinate, dogmatic, clingy